


can i call you mine

by chainofclovers



Category: Grace and Frankie (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-09
Updated: 2019-11-09
Packaged: 2021-01-25 11:57:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21355900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chainofclovers/pseuds/chainofclovers
Summary: They were in the shower when the calls came.
Relationships: Frankie Bergstein/Grace Hanson
Comments: 30
Kudos: 132
Collections: Femslash Exchange 2019





	can i call you mine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fictorium](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fictorium/gifts).

> I hope you enjoy this story, Fictorium! It was a pleasure to write it for you.
> 
> Title from the song "July Flame" by Laura Veirs.

They were in the shower when the calls came. Their phones lay side by side on the bed and took turns ringing—first Frankie Bergstein’s, then Grace Hanson’s, then Frankie Bergstein’s again. Bud Bergstein was the caller, and for a variety of reasons generational and experiential, he tended to avoid leaving voicemails. But after Frankie (his mother) collected four missed calls, and after Grace (his stepfather’s ex-wife, his mother’s best friend and housemate) collected three, he left similar messages on both phones. Similar but different: the voicemail on Frankie’s phone was a message from child to parent, and for some children and parents—for Bud and Frankie—the fact of that connection was a shortcut to intimacy. The message would sound near-frantic to most ears, but when Frankie listened to it she’d be able to hear the way he avoided all-out panic. For Frankie, all-out panic was infectious, and she’d appreciate the restraint. The message for Grace was a study in calm.

The news waited impatiently on phones which, having jangled and vibrated and cried for attention and gone unnoticed, now looked carelessly thrown together on a smoothed-over patch of comforter on an otherwise disaster of a bed. 

It was no wonder the bed was a mess—the owners of the phones had barely left it for two days. The bed—with crumpled ivory sheets, a soft woven blanket of pale blue, and a silky, heavy floral comforter—sat in a sea-facing room in a sea-facing house, a room Grace Hanson had occupied mostly alone for years. She vacated the room during a brief marriage, at which time Frankie took it over as the house’s sole full-time occupant. Frankie texted Grace from that room, sent her blurry photos and crisp words, sent love from one device to another. And when Grace returned from her hastily-chosen adventures, Frankie didn’t leave the room she’d occupied in lovelorn protest. Now they'd stayed in it together for the past two days, exiting only briefly to search for sustenance and cleanliness. Their phones—which had grown accustomed to being tethered by messages, which seemed to ache in separation—grew quiet side-by-side, useless even, until the moment their owners left them, and the phones laid together receiving and holding onto bad news.

In the shower Grace and Frankie washed each other’s hair. Leaned into each other and kissed beneath the spray. Felt the water rush down around them, hot and loud and insistent. Grace didn’t think about how she looked, didn’t wonder if she looked ridiculous. She thought instead about who she was with Frankie, who Frankie was with her. Frankie didn’t think about what anyone thought of her or would think of her. She thought about how it felt to be with Grace, to have the freedom to focus on only each other.

They showered until the hot water ran out, a wasteful act that should have made them both feel guilty. They were too busy to feel guilty: busy squealing at the onset of chill from the cold water, busy dripping water all over the floor in the pursuit of more kisses, busy pulling extra towels from the closet and wrapping themselves up until they were shapeless and warm. 

Two days. They’d had two days to ignore the world. Now, on a Wednesday morning in March, Grace dried her hair and thought about the vibrators they needed to ship to customers all over the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. Frankie rubbed moisturizer into her face and thought of her paintbrushes, which probably had something to say about the journey she’d been on. For once, after a lifetime of tension, and although their minds contained different things, what they wanted was exactly the same. They wanted to make coffee and eat breakfast and to use the energy from coffee and breakfast to rush through their work preparing the Vybrant shipments. They wanted to spend the afternoon in Frankie’s studio. Grace wanted to lie down on the sofa wearing not very much and let herself get sleepy again, as sleepy as she was when she drifted away from sex and into rest on Tuesday night. Frankie wanted to stand at her easel and take Grace in, finally secure in the knowledge she wasn’t going anywhere. Grace wanted to feel Frankie’s eyes on her, find out what it meant for Frankie to look at her and paint not the truth of caricature (soul-starved, out for blood and martinis) but the truth of the building moment. The truth not of Frankie’s judgment of Grace, funny and sharp, but the funnier, sharper truth of what they were building together. 

Frankie felt not an ounce of self-doubt about the new project. She knew the painting would be beautiful: she learned from paint, and even without paint she already knew Grace’s body better than any other body. “I think,” Frankie gasped sometime Monday night, when the new feeling was even more new, when she felt like a contracting rubber band of joy and orgasm and poured-out grief, “I think it’s because we’ve watched each other for so long.” How else to explain the connection points that burned between them. How else to go from from an affection miserable in its aimlessness—begrudgingly bestowed but savored forehead kisses, long looks with no natural conclusion, jealousy arriving in feverish stabs—to this heat, this almost tragically blissful goodness.

After their shower they walked back into the bedroom together, towels still rung around their necks, plush robes covering their bodies. Grace noticed the telephone notifications first and handed Frankie her phone. Grace’s fear was greater and lesser than Frankie’s: Bud wasn’t her son, so whatever maternal panic she felt was less potent. At the same time, Bud wasn’t her son. What could be bad enough that he’d call her three times?

They listened to the similar but different messages simultaneously, holding onto each other at first, although Frankie let go when Bud got into the gist of the message, already whirling toward a response to the news. Robert and Sol were in Los Angeles. Early morning, the same Wednesday morning they were in right now, Sol went out by himself and tripped on a stone loosened from a broken sidewalk and broke his leg in several places. He required surgery that day, to set the bones with metal plates he’d have for the rest of his life. The frantic calls, Grace and Frankie both assumed, were not about the tibia and fibula but about the anesthesia. The going under.

Frankie didn’t think in terms of being invited or uninvited to go and help, or to go and wait uselessly with Robert and Bud (who could leave work for a day or two), or to go and serve as official text messenger for Coyote (who couldn’t leave his job on short notice). She wanted to see Sol before the going under. When Bud’s car pulled up to the house, Frankie got in it. She didn’t ask Grace if she wanted to go too. When Robert had his heart attack, she didn’t recall Grace formally inviting Frankie to join her in the hospital. Everyone knew to gather, to do what needed to be done. But today Grace stayed behind at the Vybrant table, something hollow in the expression on her face. She didn’t kiss Frankie goodbye or wish her good luck. 

The drive from La Jolla to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center lasted two hours. By the end of the first hour, Frankie stopped thinking Grace had done something wrong and started to realize she herself had.

When Grace’s phone rang in the early afternoon, she expected the caller to be Frankie. “Dad’s freaking out because the surgeon won’t be ready for awhile,” her daughter Brianna said. She sighed. “Mal dropped the kids with Mitch, and we’re heading up there, just for tonight.”

“I’ll go with you,” said Grace. She ignored the surprise in the tone of Brianna’s response.

In the car the girls shared more information—information in the Hanson style—than Bud provided on the phone. Robert was asleep when Sol left their hotel room. His phone was on silent, so he missed a call or two from Sol, a call from the emergency room, and another, and another.

Robert was always a sound sleeper. When Grace shared a bed with him, he spluttered awake most mornings with a strange gasping snore, as if shocked to find himself where he was. She pictured him this morning, disoriented to wake up alone in Los Angeles but perhaps not as lost as he felt when his fate was to wake up with her. It would have frightened him to receive so many missed calls from his husband and from unknown numbers, but Grace sat in the front passenger seat of Mallory’s SUV flashing with unsympathetic rage. She imagined Sol on a love errand, going out early on a morning mid-vacation to fetch a newspaper with horrible news and rare pastries Robert shouldn’t eat. She imagined Robert entirely unaware of Sol’s absence. He could always sleep anywhere, at any time. She hated him for sleeping well, and she hated Sol, too, for being whimsical and careless. 

Frankie was in Sol’s hospital room when Grace, Brianna, and Mallory arrived.“She’s been in there awhile,” Robert said to Grace in lieu of a greeting. “Bud’s in there too.” He hovered respectfully in the hallway outside the room. 

Grace nodded. She wished she knew if Frankie were calm or overwrought. She wanted to burst into the hospital room, not as an encouraging presence for Sol but to pull Frankie back from the past. “Holding up okay?” 

Robert sighed, eyes raised heavenward, then dropped the posture when Mallory and Brianna approached him on either side and formed a three-person group hug. “I’m fine,” Robert said. “Sol’s fine. You didn’t all have to come.” 

It was almost time for the nurses to wheel Sol away for surgery. Almost time for Frankie and Bud to leave the room so Robert could have a moment alone with him. Sol’s leg was stabilized, but he was fidgety with nerves, with attention. His skin shone with the sheen of pain and painkillers.

“Sol,” Frankie said, the name a preamble. She’d spent a long time in this room, building up to this moment. She stood at the side of Sol’s bed touching no part of him, their eldest son mirroring her posture on the other side. “Before you go in”—she cleared her throat—“before you go in. You should know that you'll be just fine in surgery, first of all, but before you go in, you should know: I’ve found love. You don’t have to worry.” She glanced at Bud, who was all solemn focus. Returned to Sol, who wore the same look of attentive bemusement he had minutes prior. Maybe, Frankie thought, this information wasn’t so important to him. Not so important to someone perpetually bemused at the entire world. Maybe she’d only _thought_ there used to be something special about the way it felt for him to give that bowled-over yet upright affection to her. 

“You found love,” Sol said with the lilt of question.

“Yeah. And if I didn’t royally screw things up leaving her in La Jolla with 78 vibrators to ship, I’ll get to keep her.” 

Frankie felt—mother, son—Bud’s eyes widen without having to look. 

“Sweetheart, Grace is married,” Sol said.

“We’ll all pretend you didn’t say that,” said Bud. 

Frankie wanted to laugh but didn’t. “She came back home.”

She barely registered Robert pushing his way into the room as soon as they left because Grace was in the hallway, carrying herself with the usual poise. Frankie saw past it, saw the way everything in Grace seemed to beg for an invitation.

“It’s almost time for them to take him,” Frankie said. If Grace wanted an invitation to the hospital room, the timing wasn’t good. “So unless you wanna third wheel it up in there—”

“I should've gone with you this morning,” said Grace.

“I should've asked you to.” Frankie rolled her eyes. “Or not come at all.” 

They smiled at each other. The anti-climax was the climax—to feel the hurt erode before it could turn into real anger. Maybe that was the secret to happiness: admit out loud there was a gap between ideal behavior and reality. Imply next time would be better and mean it. 

The kids sat on chairs in the hallway; the kids could hear. “Come with me to the vending machine,” Frankie said. Grace followed her not to the vending machine but to a quieter hallway just around the corner, a place they could kiss unseen. 

“He’ll be okay,” Grace said between kisses.

“Not worried about it,” said Frankie.

They returned empty-handed. “Mom talk you out of the Fritos, Frankie?” Brianna asked, and neither Grace nor Frankie could tell if it was an actual question.

“I think it’s obvious they had no intention of buying Fritos,” said Bud. 

Brianna coughed. 

“What?” asked Mallory.

Bud and Brianna looked at her witheringly. Brianna found the words first: “I’m sure Mom’s divorcing a multi-millionaire with zero signs of male-pattern baldness just for, you know, shits and giggles.” 

“Read between the lines,” added Bud, as if he hadn’t just had his own moment of shock in Sol’s room.

“We’re right here,” said Grace.

Frankie turned to Grace. “Babe, with all this time to kill, maybe we should practice our revised elevator pitch.”

Everyone returned studiously to their phones.

There would be more conversation eventually, on a day less about Sol. Questions about origins and identity: complicated, answerable questions. Today this was enough.

On the other side of a minor emergency lurked boredom: the boredom of chairs in hallways, the boredom of shapeless hours forced into a long and narrow space. While Sol was in surgery, Frankie bought actual Fritos and passed them up and down the row of chairs. Everyone flipped through magazines without reading them, absorbing images of the 2016 Masters Tournament, 15-minute weeknight dinners invented for April 2018, a TV preview from earlier this year. The Fritos made their fingerprints greasy, and each magazine took on the traces. Brianna booked hotel rooms on her phone, making everyone pay her back immediately. The Hansons and Bergsteins periodically emerged from companionable solitude to talk quietly, aware of other people having better and worse days in close proximity. 

When the surgeon finally showed up in the hallway, the news was good. “He’s still very tired, but you can go in to see him soon,” she said to Robert only. 

Grace shut her eyes and leaned back in her plastic chair until her head met the wall, which was papered with a gently ridged wallpaper of utilitarian beige. Exhaustion rippled the air around her, informed the visions behind her eyelids. Frankie sat next to her, the closeness deliciously painful. The morning felt very far away. Frankie let her eyes close.

Familiar voices circulated around them. “Good God, this is boring,” Brianna said quietly, presumably to Mallory. Then, a little louder: “We’ll take Mom and Frankie to the hotel.” 

Grace and Frankie didn’t appreciate the feeling of being a younger person’s excuse to escape. No adult wanted to be a toddler in need of shepherding. But after saying their goodbyes to Robert and Bud, who promised to call in the morning and be honest about whether anyone needed to come back to the hospital, it felt good to follow Brianna and Mallory to the parking lot. The air outside was cool, an invitation to wake up just long enough to make it to a place where you could fall asleep again. 

Brianna offered her mother and then Frankie the front seat, but they chose the back. After buckling in, Frankie pulled at her seat belt until it was slack enough for her to lie across Grace’s lap. “I’m still buckled,” she pointed out, as though Grace would bother to complain. “It’s a short ride.” 

Grace wove her fingers through Frankie’s hair and rested her other hand on Frankie’s shoulder. Mallory maneuvered out of the parking space, and Brianna found music, and Grace felt not shepherded but pulled forward, and Frankie felt layer upon layer of relief. They rode quietly through the night, every minute a minute closer to being alone together.


End file.
